Vol 19, No 01, Article 02, PDF

Abstract: This paper presents a brief overview of the philosophical roots and historical development of existential psychotherapy. While contemporary existential therapists can trace the origins of this approach to the teachings of ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, current theory and practice owes more to the work of European philosophers such as Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche, and Edmund Husserl’s writing on phenomenology. This, in turn, informed the work of Martin Heidegger and Jean-Paul Sartre, among others, and led to innovations in European psychiatric and psychotherapeutic practice, which continue to the present day. The existential-phenomenological approach has, over time, been taken up and further developed by theorists and practitioners internationally. The authors suggest that the growing popularity of existential therapy with both practitioners and clients is due to a great extent to the importance it places on an examination of relationship, and the way in which it takes questions surrounding the meaning-possibilities of ‘being’ as its primary defining characteristic.Keywords: Existential, phenomenological, psychotherapy, historical development, future, Britain, Europe, North America, Latin America, Middle East, Australia, Asia, Africa.